a) Editing passwd files and setting kernel parameters in my current machine to get services up for remote boot and network install (and reverse the changes afterwards)b) Running a ChallengeS server with 100 mbit to act as an install serverc) installing VMWare to run DINA

...i have created a small docker container for acting as an install server for SGI machines.

For people not familiar with docker: it is basically a collection of programs and files inside a closed region of your Windows/Linux/Mac environment. This 'container' integrates with your system to offer a configurable stand-alone service for your local system or network. It is much smaller than a VM and very suitable for simple services.

I currently use Debian as a small parent image and added only the essential files and services to make it work: bootpd, tftpd, rsh and a working korn shell plus some sysctl sauce.

Sounds sorta similar to the Vagrant setup I came up with a couple months ago to boot SGIs... but obviously I'm using Vagrant/Virtualbox instead of Docker. This is designed to Layer2-bridge onto your network so you can use RARP to boot installers on SGIs without having to type in IP addresses.

halfmanhalftaco wrote:Sounds sorta similar to the Vagrant setup I came up with a couple months ago to boot SGIs... but obviously I'm using Vagrant/Virtualbox instead of Docker. This is designed to Layer2-bridge onto your network so you can use RARP to boot installers on SGIs without having to type in IP addresses.

Absolutely! Looking at the Vagrant file i see a very similar setup of services and mksh as kornshell like my docker: Using Debian images guarantees a small and supported foundation for our solutions.

I was thinking of adding an efs filesystem driver to augment the docker with an option of supplying IRIX efs disk images for adding it to the /DIST volume automatically. This would mean extra scripting to get everything working, and i kinda need some more testing with this docker before i do this.

Together with DINA/VMPlayer and Irixboot/Vagrant we now indeed have plenty of solutions for people to try out and improve.

dexter1 wrote:Absolutely! Looking at the Vagrant file i see a very similar setup of services and mksh as kornshell like my docker: Using Debian images guarantees a small and supported foundation for our solutions.

I was thinking of adding an efs filesystem driver to augment the docker with an option of supplying IRIX efs disk images for adding it to the /DIST volume automatically. This would mean extra scripting to get everything working, and i kinda need some more testing with this docker before i do this.

Together with DINA/VMPlayer and Irixboot/Vagrant we now indeed have plenty of solutions for people to try out and improve.

Feel free to borrow/adapt any part of the scripts I came up with, not sure how applicable to Docker they would be - I generally avoid Docker because I refuse to use it on Windows since the "standard" tools require you to use Hyper-V, which disables any other hypervisor you might want to use (e.g VMWare/Virtualbox). Vagrant/Virtualbox works pretty seamlessly for me on all the types of (modern) machines I use - Macs, Linux, Windows.

I intended irixboot to be short-lived/disposable - punch in the MAC address/IP address/IRIX version into the vagrantfile and let it build a VM quickly while extracting the CD images, then once you finish installing you kill it.

I'm also planning on coming up with something similar for Sun machines. For most versions of Solaris it is pretty straightforward but a little different from IRIX - instead of pulling data over rsh like IRIX does, Solaris uses NFS mounts. There are some oddities in the Sun PROMs/kernels that don't seem to 100% work with the Linux versions of the server components, I'll have to see if there's any workarounds for that. Today I'm just using a Solaris 10 x86 VM for all my jumpstart/diskless Sun needs, but something repeatable would be nice.